Chicken Manure

Your editorial "The chicken waste conundrum" (Aug. 23) was right that the chicken processing industry needs to be properly regulated. In order to protect the livelihoods of Maryland farmers, we need to practice fair, responsible and sustainable agriculture. That is not what's going on in the chicken processing industry today. Large-scale chicken processors like Tyson and Perdue own the 300 million birds they profit from every year but not the 400,000 pounds of manure those birds create.

In a widely watched case on the Eastern Shore, federal judge William Nickerson ruled Thursday that Alan and Kristin Hudson's Berlin farm was not in violation of the federal Clean Water Act. The plaintiffs, the Waterkeeper Alliance led by controversial environmentalist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., had hoped to establish that big food processors, in this case Perdue Inc., could be held liable for the alleged pollution sins of "contract growers" like the Hudson...

If you live along the Patapsco River, Sparrows Point, Bear Creek or Coke Point you and your family are paying with your health ("Port authorities find health risks near Sparrows Point," May 23). These four areas are overwhelmingly contaminated to the point where people and wildlife are at risk of exposure to toxic chemicals and carcinogens. Benzene is only one of many chemical contaminates in our waters; there are also high levels of arsenic from chicken manure, pesticides and chemical fertilizers.

Lawyers squared off one last time Friday in a packed Baltimore courtroom to wrap up the long-running trial of a bitterly contested pollution lawsuit with ramifications for water cleanup efforts and the poultry industry in Maryland and nationwide. Jane Barrett, the lawyer for the Waterkeeper Alliance, told U.S. District Judge William M. Nickerson that the New York-based environmental group had amassed overwhelming evidence during more than two weeks of testimony in October that chicken manure from Alan and Kristin Hudson's farm near Berlin had washed into a drainage ditch that ultimately empties into the Pocomoke River, a tributary of the Chesapeake Bay. But lawyers for the Hudsons and for Perdue countered that the environmental group had failed to make the case that the high levels of disease-causing bacteria found in the ditch came from chicken manure.

KENT NARROWS -- After the clams in the Chesapeake Bay turned scarce last year, waterman Clarence Thomas stored his gear and started crabbing, using lines with the cheapest bait he could find -- chicken necks.But after pulling up yard after yard of crab-less lines, the 56-year-old Chestertown waterman, who started fishing at 14, wondered why there was so little life in the bay."The catch keeps getting worse every year," he says. "It isn't my bait. I tried bull lips and eels, and the crabs bit better on chicken necks.

WASHINGTON -- Critics of the tax-cut bill took mostly broad swipes at the measure yesterday, but one particular provision really ruffled their feathers: a tax credit for chicken manure."

TWO PROPOSALS to deal with Maryland's mounting mounds of manure from chicken farms hold promise to go beyond the delayed state efforts to reduce agricultural runoff pollution of waterways.Manure-fueled power plants would get a federal tax credit for electricity they produce under a bill backed by Maryland's two U.S. senators. The tax break could encourage plans for a generating plant on the Eastern Shore, the heart of the state's chicken industry. A British firm, which has built three power plants in England's poultry region, is talking with Delmarva chicken producers about building a plant there.

Chicken manure just might be one of Mother Nature's best fertilizers.It is also one of the cheapest.As Coulbourne Swift figures it, he can save up to $50 an acre by spreading chicken manure over his farm rather than using chemical fertilizer."

AS IF THERE were not enough reasons to leave meat off my plate. Meat-based diets have already been clearly linked to heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes and cancer, to name a few.Now, the September-October issue of Preventive Medicine relates a frightening and dangerous practice carried out by meat producers across the United States: the use of manure, usually from chickens, as livestock feed. This unsavory practice is surprisingly common. In Arkansas alone, 2.6 million pounds of chicken doo-doo become breakfast for beef cattle every year.

Steve Vayda is not making any big claims -- not yet anyway.But the Hampstead resident just may have come up with an idea that could help scientists solve the Pocomoke River fish kill, while putting a little extra money in the pockets of Eastern Shore chicken growers.Vayda, a 53-year old mechanical engineer who has spent his career designing giant boilers for electric power plants, has developed a furnace that uses chicken manure to heat poultry houses.The system has captured the attention of the Maryland Department of Business and Economic Development (DBED)

The recent commentary by representatives of Senior Scientists and Policymakers for the Bay regarding poultry waste regulations was wrong in many ways ("No more half-measures," June 18). They are correct that more people and their pollution will stress our environment. More people will reverse the progress that agriculture is making. TheU.S. Environmental Protection Agencyreports that agriculture has made tremendous progress in reducing nutrient contributions to the Chesapeake Bay. Urban and suburban sectors are getting worse.

The Daily Times and The Baltimore Sun published an article in their May 9th editions reporting criticism by a Washington-based environmental extremist group of a so-called "cozy relationship" between Governor O'Malley and an attorney for our own Perdue, Inc. ("O'Malley ties to Perdue lawyer queried"). To them, I say, "And your problem is what?" From our perspective, we are deeply appreciative that we have a governor who understands from whence our life-blood flows and is willing to step up and fight hard to help us maintain the special place we call home.

In a move that increases Maryland's commitment to renewable energy, the state Board of Public Works approved a deal Wednesday under which a Virginia company will be given a 30-year lease on land at an Eastern Shore prison to build a plant that will generate electricity out of a mixture of crops and chicken manure. Under its agreement with ECOCORP Inc. of Arlington, Va., the state will provide a 4.2-acre site at the Eastern Correctional Institute near Princess Anne at an annual rent of $100 for the company to construct the so-called anaerobic digester.

As an Eastern Shore chicken grower, like most others chicken growers and farmers, I was pleased to read recently in The Baltimore Sun of a study that indicates that after years of work, progress is being made in reducing the size and duration of Chesapeake Bay dead zones. Much of this success is due to improvements in farming techniques. Experts have said for years that non-point source pollution reduction practices such as we use on farms would take years or decades to show results.

If you live along the Patapsco River, Sparrows Point, Bear Creek or Coke Point you and your family are paying with your health ("Port authorities find health risks near Sparrows Point," May 23). These four areas are overwhelmingly contaminated to the point where people and wildlife are at risk of exposure to toxic chemicals and carcinogens. Benzene is only one of many chemical contaminates in our waters; there are also high levels of arsenic from chicken manure, pesticides and chemical fertilizers.

Your editorial "The chicken waste conundrum" (Aug. 23) was right that the chicken processing industry needs to be properly regulated. In order to protect the livelihoods of Maryland farmers, we need to practice fair, responsible and sustainable agriculture. That is not what's going on in the chicken processing industry today. Large-scale chicken processors like Tyson and Perdue own the 300 million birds they profit from every year but not the 400,000 pounds of manure those birds create.

COLLEGE PARK -- You may not want to stuff your Christmas stocking with it, but researchers here say they know what it takes to grow a bigger and brighter poinsettia.Chicken poop.If they are right, chicken farmers on the Eastern Shore may find a new home for the 800,000 tons of manure that is generated each year -- your garden and the nation's nurseries.And that could prove quite a gift to environmentalists and the state's seafood industry. Scientists suspect a link between poultry waste used as fertilizer and Pfiesteria piscicida, the toxic microbe that killed tens of thousands of fish and left 30 people sick this summer.

In an effort to clean up polluted runoff from chicken manure, Maryland officials have decided to seek new regulations that would hold big poultry companies accountable for the waste their animals produce. Secretary of the Environment Jane Nishida said Maryland would be among the first states in the nation to make the poultry companies take responsibility for the chicken manure, which until now has been a problem left to the growers who raise the birds. The state is "strongly considering" holding the big companies, known as "integrators," responsible for proper disposal of the chickens' waste, Nishida said last night.

The Environmental Protection Agency has told Maryland's poultry farmers it intends to enforce for the first time federal pollution rules governing chicken manure - a crackdown that has surprised and angered growers while pleasing environmentalists who've long complained about agricultural runoff fouling Chesapeake Bay. At meetings recently on the Eastern Shore, EPA officials told several hundred farmers that they must get federal pollution-discharge permits...

If Maryland moves forward with a chicken manure-burning electric power plant, a British company could revive its plans to build the facility on the Eastern Shore. Fibrowatt Ltd. first proposed a plant that would produce electricity from poultry manure nearly 10 years ago, after runoff from grain fields fertilized with chicken manure was blamed for toxic outbreaks of Pfiesteria piscicida. The microorganism caused fish kills and forced three Maryland rivers to be closed to recreational use. Fibrowatt, which was operating two poultry manure-burning plants in England in 1997 and had a third under construction, offered to build a plant here that would burn about 400,000 tons of chicken manure a year and produce more than enough electricity to supply a city the size of Salisbury.